Yarra Valley Water Case Study

Yarra Valley Water settles disputes in minutes using aerial imagery

Introduction

Yarra Valley Water is the largest of Melbourne’s three water corporations, providing water and sewerage services to 1.8 million people and 50,000 businesses in the city’s northern and eastern suburbs. The company owns and maintains more than 9,000 kilometres of water mains and over 9,000 kilometres of sewer mains. In addition to supplying established communities and commercial entities, it also services new suburbs and business parks. To ensure the operational integrity of its infrastructure, Yarra Valley Water retains a dynamic and highly professional field maintenance team, committed to delivering exceptional customer service.

The company was keen to optimise the customer experience in relation to claims and billing-disputes. These investigations were often costly and time-consuming, requiring site assessments and evaluation. Through the use of new technology, Yarra Valley Water hoped to gain greater insight into customer issues to enhance decision-making, resolve disputes faster and increase customer satisfaction.

Yarra Valley Water deployed nearmap for its field maintenance division and settled disputes faster and more efficiently. It minimised revenue lost through compensation payouts and greatly improved customer satisfaction. The company also eliminated a range of travel and inspection costs, enhanced maintenance and planning operations, and cut site visits by 20% by using nearmap to provide clear and detailed visibility into its on-the-ground assets.

Furthermore, by using nearmap’s Timeline, a comprehensive archive of aerial surveys, to enable “before and after” comparisons, Yarra Valley Water was better equipped to monitor and maintain its extensive infrastructure, and respond quickly and personally to customer concerns, deepening customer engagement.

nearmap gives us fast, easy access to detailed current and historic visual information that enables us to resolve billing disputes and damage claims in minutes, increasing customer satisfaction. It also achieves substantial annual savings by enabling us to manage customer disputes quickly and efficiently, as well as improving asset management and cutting site visits by 20%, said Alberto Vela, manager of Yarra Valley Water’s Contract and Procurement.

detailed visual evidence in support of its disputes processes. This enabled the utility to determine the historical accuracy, or inaccuracy, of competing claims, resolve issues in minutes, and effect a dramatic increase in customer satisfaction.

“A property owner complained that his driveway was badly cracked because we had driven onto his property while doing maintenance works in the area,”said Alberto Vela, manager of Yarra Valley Water’s Contract and Procurement. “A month into the dispute, however, we still couldn’t determine a definitive cause, since the contractors insisted they hadn’t been anywhere near the property. We used the Timeline to view an image of the property pre-dating the maintenance works, and, by zooming down, were able to see clearly that the cracks were already there. It was then just a matter of going to see the property owner, showing him the photo, and the dispute was over. It was fantastic.”

The benefits Yarra Valley Water gains from using nearmap images to settle claims also extends to the billing division, where our customer consultants are able to have better informed conversations with customers. The outcomes have also been very impressive.

Learn more about how nearmap has helped Yarra Valley Water improve dispute resolution by downloading full PDF version.

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Adoption of nearmap’s high-resolution PhotoMaps™ imagery had an immediate impact on the whole organisation. “Pretty mucheverybody, from staff involved in preparing plans, and graphic support for base maps, through to company directors like myself, use the platform all the time,” 